I used to worry that I would run out of berserk Italian movies, especially when the 1990s give way to the 2000s but that shows what I know, because The Mummy Theme Park is one of the most baffling, weird, wonderful and just plain strange movies that I’ve seen.

Alvaro Passeri has only directed five movies*, including Plankton, Flight to Hell, The Golden Grain and Psychovision. His animation skills — he worked on Cinema Paradiso, The Shark Hunter, The Wild Beasts, Atlantis Interceptors and more — really come in handy here because this is a movie that sees its low budget and says, “We can do more.”

An earthquake reveals the underground City of the Dead in Egypt and Sheik El Sahid get the somewhat bright and probably more deranged idea to take all of the mummies and fit them with animatronics and turn them into a Jurassic Park in the sands. He wants it to be a big deal, so he calls over photographer Daniel Flynn (Adam O’Neil) and his co-worker Julie (Holly Laningham) to take photos of the place, which as far as I can tell is one room with mirrors and miniatures and all manner of in-camera and in-post special effects working as hard as they can and then some to make this movie look bigger than it is while also looking cheap while also appearing to be one of the most charming movies I’ve ever seen. It’s neon, it’s glitter, it’s robot mummies, it’s insane.

And yet, this isn’t a movie made goofy on purpose. It’s deliriously sure of itself and yet unaware of what it is at the same time and that’s the combination that I love more than any other when it comes to weird movies.

Can the flash of a camera bring mummies back to life? Are women’s breasts the only thing that can stop them? Will heads get torn off? Will someone puke up everything inside them? Can a chase scene go on forever? Will there be long scenes of fashion that pad the running time? Will there be a model train that goes through a sphinx? Is there also an evil sorceress? Will the sheik’s harem fight against one another and will one of them also be a hologram? Will there be a souvenir shop that has pharaoh heads that spit out beer?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.

I mean, this is the kind of movie where a dude gets his head sliced in half and the results look like those cutaway pages in encyclopedias we all used to obsess over. And for that reason and so many others, this is perfect. Man, I’m still processing this movie. I keep reading reviews laughing about how cheap this movie looks and we should be so lucky to have this in our lives.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*Under that name, that is. There’s also the rumor that he’s Massimiliano Cerchi, the name under which he’s directed seventeen movies including The Penthouse that came out this year. Unless there are two directors and special effects guys who have the same name and I’ve been surprised before and if you do the math, Cerchi was making those movies when he was eight. IMDB used to have them as the same person and now they’re separated, so perhaps…who can say!?!

Brian De Palma joined this movie after Gore Verbinski. walked away due to c the lack of additional money for the budget. De Palma got that money, which went right into the CGI, but was already written and the film cast. At least Ennio Morricone wrote the music.

American critics hated it — at least Roger Ebert understood the issues, saying “It misses too many of its marks. But it has extraordinary things in it. It’s as if the director, the gifted Brian De Palma, rises to the occasions but the screenplay gives him nothing much to do in between them.” — but they loved it in Europe with Cahiers du cinéma picking it as the fourth-best movie of 2000.

But man, seeing Brian De Palma direct a movie based on a Disney ride is, well, sad. But you know, people need to get paid.

Graham Yost created Justified and wrote Speed, while Jim and John Thomas wrote Predator. I guess that just may absolve them all for this script, which is so talky and full of jargon that I almost didn’t make it through some scenes. I was kept awake by De Palma’s skill as a director.

Set twenty years in the future — which is now three years ago — the Mars I mission, commanded by Luke Graham (Don Cheadle), touches down and immediately runs into a bright white formation in the Cydonia region which ends up killing everyone but the commander. That structure? Oh, you know, the face on Mars.

Mars II becomes Mars Rescue and is made up of Commander Woody Blake (Tim Robbins), his wife Terri Fisher (Connie Neisen), Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise) and Phil Ohlmyer (Jerry O’Connell). Their ship is damaged before it even gets near Mars and Woody sacrifices himself to save his crew. They solve a missing DNA helix and soon are admitted inside the face, where they discover that humanoid Martian lifeforms left the planet centuries ago but seeded our planet with their DNA, creating life that could one day make it to Mars.

As the astronauts all escape, the aliens invite them to follow them. Only Jim goes, which makes sense as he’s a widower with nothing left on Earth. Also: Gary Sinise’s eye makeup suggests that he either loves glam or is already part alien.

I loved that the astronauts are blasting “Dance the Night Away” by Van Halen at one point but the whole thing feels at once too long and too short. De Palma did what he could, I think.

The set was 2 million square feet and took 14,000 cans of paint to create. Today, you can see the turning wheel set and the model of the ship while you wait to ride Mission Space at Epcot in Walt Disney World in Orlando.

Also, you have to love this in the credits: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s cooperation and assistance does not reflect an endorsement of the contents of the film or the treatment of the characters depicted therein.

Annika (Kim Mai Guest) watched her boyfriend die, the victim of — you know it — the evil mirror. A year later, she thinks that she is getting the power to wish people dead, all while a homeless man keeps telling her just as strong she is and yeah, he’s the spirit of the mirror and he’s Billy Drago, but he isn’t playing the same role as the last movie.

And his name is Frederick Champion.

Director and co-writer Paulette Victor-Lifton directed and co-wrote this with Annette and Gina Cascone, who were the ones who wrote the original Mirror, Mirror. Paulette was married to this film’s producer, Jimmy Liftin, and today she has directed 17 movies and is an ADR facility supervisor on tons of big streaming programs.

How strange that the movies in this series play tag, if you will.

In Mirror, Mirror and Mirror, Mirror 2: Raven Dance, William Sanderson plays two unconnected roles.

In Mirror, Mirror 2: Raven Dance and Mirror, Mirror 3: The Voyeur, Mark Ruffalo shows up as two different people.

And now, Billy Drago does the same.

There are ravers getting killed by this mirror, which is a slasher but not really. I can’t believe that there are four of these movies but I can believe if there were five, I would be watching that movie now.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Together is set in the world of sharehome communes in 1970s Stockholm. Göran (Gustaf Hammarsten) is the leader but his gentle nature basically just has him keeping everyone from fighting over politics and even food. But when his sister Elisabeth (Lisa Lindgren) makes a break from her abusive husband Rolf (Michael Nyqvist) and moves in along with her children Eva (Emma Samuelsson) and Stefan (Sam Kessel), dynamics start to shift. For example, Göran’s girlfriend Lena (Anja Lundqvist) wants the benefit of the open relationships that come with living in the commune, but she doesn’t want to navigate all of the personalities and responsibilities that come with this lifestyle.

Meanwhile, ex-husband and wife Lasse (Ole Rapace) and Anna (Jessica Liedberg) still live in the commune and their son Tet becomes friends with Steven, where they bond at playing a game where one is Augusto Pinochet and the other is a political prisoner being tortured. As for Eva, she falls for a neighbor whose family shows disdain for the commune but engages in behavior worse than what they claim to dislike so much. To be honest, the children are lost, aliens in their new school and nearly all alone at home as their parents seem to forget them as they try to establish their new sexual identities.

Moodysson filmed a sequel to this in 2022 called Together 99 in which Göran and Klas establish a new commune. Nearly everyone returned, except Nyqvist, who died in 2017, and Ola Rapace who was replaced by Jonas Karlsson.

The tagline to this film, “One house; one revolutionary; two open straight marriages; three gay people (maybe four); three children; two carnivores and eight vegetarians; there’s only one way they’re going to make it… together.” will tell you all you need to know. As for that fourth maybe, that would be the previously mentioned Klas.

Moodysson excels in this film by showing what life is like in a living situation that I will never experience. He shows the highs and lows and the real life behind what for many is either past history or a fantasy.

The limited edition The Lukas Moodysson Collection from Arrow includes high definition blu rays of seven films, as well as interviews with Moodysson and other cast and crew, moderated by film programmer Sarah Lutton. There’s also a two hundred page featuring new writing by Peter Walsh, excerpts from the original press kits for each film, interviews with and directors’ statements from Moodysson and essays on his films from a 2014 special issue of the Nordic culture journal Scandinavica by C. Claire Thomson, Helga H. Lúthersdóttir, Elina Nilsson, Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerståhl Stenport and Kjerstin Moody.

Together appears as a 4K restoration by the Swedish Film Institute from the original camera negative, approved by Moodysson and cinematographer Ulf Brantås. There’s also interviews with Moodysson, script supervisor Malin Fornander and editor Michal Leszczylowski, deleted scenes, a trailer and an image gallery.

You can get this set from MVD.

There are two versions of this movie for America and you know, that may be two too many. What child wants to watch more than 1,500 people lose their lives? I mean, well, me as a kid because my friend Bill and I built way too many Titanic model kits and used to also build model cities and have natural disasters destroy them and then record audio of dying people in their final moments begging to have their arms amputated. I was a weird kid and even as strange as I was, I would not have watched this movie.

The version I saw of this was 58 minutes with 12 minutes of credits showing deleted scenes instead of the 82-minute long version and I hesitate to learn what was on there.

The heroine is Angelica, the poor servant of a wicked stepmother and two stepsisters who is seeking her mother but only as a locket with a photo of her. Cinderella is on the Titanic and yes, she can speak to the many animals who are also on board. There is also singing.

There is also the ship sinking and mostly everyone dying.

I mean, this movie is at once a combination of Love Boat — many different plots come together like scheming women trying to take the money of rich men and a jewel thief being chased by a cop — and the most sub-Disney movie you’ve avoided at Goodwill because you thought that maybe it was a religious cartoon.

Yes, there’s an evil chihuahua, some dalmations straight out of 101 Dalmations, some Mexican and Yiddish mice straight out of An American Tale, geese, a bird named Hector and a dog named Fritz who has to be a time traveler because how else would be able to rap and completely take over this movie and do a song called “Party Time?” I’m perfectly fine with cartoon animals being able to walk like humans, wear clothes and have music numbers, but I draw the line at anachronism.

Yet more to the point, should children be watching cartoons where people have to choose to die over their loved ones or remain behind and die because of love? As people recorded those screams on the soundtrack as the ship sinks, did anyone in the booth say, “Why are we making this?”

Characters literally walk away from scenes right in the middle of conversations in this. It’s almost amazing the sheer lack of quality on every level and yet that makes me want to watch this all over again. Like how at one point, someone is trying to get an old lady on one of the lifeboats and says, “Come on miss, you’re the last one on this boat.” She answers, “Rubbish, we’re in the middle of the ocean.” What does that mean?

This had an American consulting writer, Jymn Magon, who also wrote A Goofy Movie, The Book of Pooh, An All Dogs Chirstmas Carol and episodes of Duck Tales, Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers and Darkwing Duck. I really want to speak to Jymn and find out how this happened.

Let me tell you how: the Italy exploitation film industry.

Camillo Teti, who directed and wrote this movie, produced The Dead Are Alive!, Exterminators of the Year 3000 and the Killer Crocodile movies. He also directed the very late in the cycle giallo The Killer Is Still Among Us, which is one of the sleaziest I’ve seen so just imagine. That’s the guy making a Titanic movie for kids. He also directed Yo-rhad, un amico dallo spazio, a sciene fiction cartoon that has Ornella Muti in the voice cast.

Speaking of voices, Edmund Purdom is in this.

Of course he is.

After Norm McDonald died, Dave Chappelle revealed that he did everything he could to get out of this movie, as it followed the death of his father. Chappelle said that Macdonald was the only person who could make him laugh at the time, which makes him one of the most important people with whom he’s ever worked with.

But here’s the thing. The police shields — which made me nervous just seeing that old logo and uniforms — are real. WPGH is today’s Fox 53. That’s really the Post-Gazette. But this was filmed in Vancouver instead of Pittsburgh, other than probably a few pickups, right? No?

I guess at least it’s set here?

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewsk directed and wrote this and went on to much better things, including Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon, Auto Focus and Dolemite Is My Name.  But yeah, it’s silly and actually pretty dumb, but seeing Norm whip around Muffin the dog as it draws blood on his finger while Chapelle screams made me laugh. I’m pretty simple minded

It’s also got Sherman Hemsley, Danny DeVito (who said he did this for the money) and Sarah Silverman in it. But come on. Make Pittsburgh movies here. Come on.